If it’s not ink on a page, it’s not a magazine.
Some people get bent out of shape when I say this. They assume I’m being a Luddite, or expressing a dislike of digital publications. Neither is true, as I’ll demonstrate.
In the same way that a magazine is ink on paper, a news app or website is not a newspaper, anything you can send by email is not a newsletter, and text you can read on your phone is not a book.
I know there are a lot of publishers who use the words differently than I do. They refer to a digital magazine as a magazine, and a digital newsletter as a newsletter. I respect their ideas and their experience in the industry, but in this case, they’re making a mistake. First, they’re inviting confusion. Second, they’re limiting product creativity.
I’ve worked with companies that have both print and digital newsletters and magazines, and people are constantly getting them confused. It can be annoying, especially because there’s a very simple fix.
Use different words for different things. And they are most definitely different things.
People have mostly adopted the book/e-book distinction, as illustrated by a recent headline from Bo Sacks’s daily email: “Penguin Random House wants you to get off your phone and read a book for once.”
Think about what that headline assumes, and what you understood when you read it. An e-book on your Kindle app is not a “book.” It’s an e-book.
It’s not anti-ebook to say that an ebook is a different thing! It’s simply a matter of being careful with words.
My solution is that we should use e-book, e-newsletter, and e-magazine to refer to a digital product. I’ll admit that e-newspaper sounds a little weird, but we’ll get over it. The other alternative is to toss “digital” everywhere, but that gets wordy and unwieldy.
The point is to be precise with words so we can speak clearly. But it’s not only about that. It also impacts revenue and product.
For example, let’s imagine someone wanted to make the best possible edition of The Hobbit. What would it look like?
It would be bound in leather. The title and author would be stamped in gold foil, and a full-color image would shine out of an inset on the front cover. The spine would resemble a dragon’s scales. The paper would be thick, and have an ancient, almost parchment-like quality. Or maybe it is parchment. The book would be full of images, always set on the page opposite the relevant text. Some of the images would be oversized, and they would fold out in full color, on glossy paper. A fold-out map would be attached to the inside of the back cover, and there would be a silk ribbon for a bookmark. There would be QR codes to take the reader to audio guides to correct pronunciations and additional information.
How much of that translates to an e-book? Some, but not most.
But an e-book offers other possibilities. You can hyperlink text. You can allow readers to share comments, or to ask questions.
I hope the point is obvious. There are ways to make a fantastic print product, and there are ways to make a fantastic digital product, and they require different thinking. Reducing it all down to “book” means you’ll probably pick only what’s common to both formats, which will make the book and the ebook a poorer experience.
The same can be said for newsletters and newspapers, but especially for magazines.
A magazine can have scented pages, blow-in cards, and tear-out coupons. You can write in it. You can put it on your coffee table. You can read it in the tub without fear of destroying an expensive electronic gadget, and you can flip its pages on Amtrak even when the WiFi is awful. An e-magazine can’t do those things, but it can have audio, video, and discussion boards. You can also track which pages people read in your e-magazine. An e-magazine isn’t limited by issues, by a single cover image, by a single production date, or by printing and mailing delays. And subscribers can search.
If you think of it as “a magazine,” you might do the print edition first, then convert it into a “digital edition,” or you might be the really hip “digital first” company and create a print edition from the digital content.
Here’s the important point. In neither case are you likely to capitalize on all the cool things you could do with this product.
By thinking of your digital product as a “magazine,” you’re limiting it.
What I’m proposing is the furthest thing possible from Luddism, or being down on digital publications. I’m saying we should set print and digital free from outdated thinking and make both of them the best they can be. Let print be the best product it can be, and let digital be the best product it can be.
One way to facilitate that is to stop calling them by the same words. Create an environment where words are precise, and where product creativity can be maximized.
One example I like to cite is this one: When you’re cited, interviewed, or have your work published with a media outlet that has both digital and print; and that publishing was only exercised in the e-version, online, or digital–it doesn’t carry near the authority as it does in the print edition. There is much more weight, thought, attention, consideration, and intentionality when words appear in print than digital (where they can be thrown up in an instant, changed, edited later, corrected, removed, etc.). I heard an interviewer ask his subject about some area of expertise, whereupon the subject mentioned a well-known magazine where he appeared. Impressive. The interviewer rather embarrassed his subject by pointing out the citation “wasn’t in the actual printed magazine, right?” The interviewee had to admit his words were in one of the online forums. The implication was stark, if not a bit rude: “Doesn’t count!”
Of course, it still counts. But the authority and reputation of print remains superior to digital; at least for now.
Very good point. There’s a gravitas to print that digital doesn’t carry.